Some time later, I came across this video by Seymour Papert . In it, Papert shows the use of the Logo programming language to control a "turtle" either on the screen or on a physical surface. By manipulating the turtle, students can create shapes, animations or music that are personally meaningful. While doing this, they use mathematical concepts and discover some of their own maths.
Learning in this way, the students acquire a scientific mindset. They start with the desire to create something, they hypothesise a way of getting there and then observe the results. As in all computer programming tasks, it is likely that the first attempt will fail to some extent, though not completely. The student will want to "debug" his or her creation through a process of progressive refinement.
This differs from most classroom mathematics in a few important ways:
- The student is not being being taught alien concepts with the -often
empty- promise that they will become useful at a later stage;
- The student is not either "right" or "wrong"
but somewhere on the continuum between the two;
- The student does not need to check the answer with the
teacher or in an answer key. S/he can see to what extent the
creation on the screen corresponds to the design s/he had in mind;
and, finally,
- The student has an incentive to go through the debugging
process. After all, the creation is their own.
In most contemporary educational situations where children come into contact with computers the computer is used to put children through their paces, to provide exercises of an appropriate level of difficulty, to provide feedback, and to dispense information. The computer programming the child.” -- Seymour Papert, Mindstorms (cited in Audrey Watters, Visiting Seymour, 30 July, 2013.As is the case with grand structures, we have the means to do better. It is the ambition that we lack!
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